d on me,
while Harry fidgeted uneasily. Now I think it would jar even more
forcibly. A hard life face to face with wild nature, among fearless,
honest men, either by land or sea, induces, among other things, a
becoming humility. There are times, out on the vast prairie, when, through
glories of pearl and crimson, night melts into day, or up in the northern
muskegs, where the great Aurora blazes down through the bitter frost, when
one stands, as it were, abashed and awe-stricken under a dim perception of
the majesty upholding this universe. Then, and because of this, the man
with understanding eyes will never be deceived by complacent harangues on
sacred things from such as Coombs who never lend a luckless neighbor
seed-wheat, and oppress the hireling. Much better seemed Jasper's answer
when Harry once asked him for twenty acres' seed: "Take half that's in the
granary, if you want it. Damnation! why didn't you come before?"

We retired early, Harry and I, to sleep in the same room, with the rusty
stove-pipe running through it; and we rose, I think, at four o'clock;
while an hour later the feet of the big plow-oxen were trampling the rich
loam where the frost had mellowed the fall back-setting. We worked until
nine that night, and I had words with Coombs when he gave me directions
about plowing. We do not get our land for nothing in Lancashire, and so
learn to work the utmost out of every foot of it. However, I do not
purpose to dilate upon either disc-harrows or breaking prairie, nor even
the cutting of wild hay--which harsh and wiry product is excellent
feeding--for all these matters will be mentioned again. Still, as spring
and summer rolled away, I gathered experience that saved me a good deal of
money, and I felt at least an inch less round the waist and another
broader round the shoulders.

Then one Saturday evening, when the northwest blazed with orange and
saffron flame, I lay among the tussocks of whispering grass reading for
the third or fourth time a few well-worn letters from Cousin Alice. Acre
by acre the tall wheat, changing from green to ochre, rippled before me;
and, had its owner's hand been more open, it would have been a splendid
crop. Marvin, Harry, and I had plowed for and sown it, because Coombs
despised manual labor, and confined himself chiefly to fault-finding. It
struck me that if we could do this for another we could do even more for
ourselves. My agreement expired at harvest, and already the fi